‘I want her gone,’ I said. I didn’t shout. I sat in the armchair in the front dining room while Thomas wore down the carpet in front of me like a Prussian soldier stomping across Europe. He was still wearing those piss-stained trousers he’d dragged himself home in.
I was bruised and sore from my fall down the stairs but not badly injured. No doubt Mrs Wiggs was bitterly disappointed about that. Of course, I had been fortuitously found by her resourceful self. How could we ever survive without her! I’d come round as I was being dragged by my arms along the floor into the front dining room. I saw my own white feet poking up at the heavens and couldn’t understand why the rest of the world was moving away from me. I thought I was dead. Mrs Wiggs groaned with the strain of heaving me into the armchair as I struggled against her. It must have been seven or eight o’clock, because it was as light as it was going to get on a dreary London day now we were nearly in October.
Mrs Wiggs left me there while she went to rouse Thomas, which she attempted to achieve by slapping his face and then applying smelling salts, but it was another hour before she was successful.
My only injury was a green, egg-shaped lump on my forehead that shone like a beacon and throbbed like I’d drunk a bottle of brandy. After Mrs Wiggs had dealt with Thomas, she came at me with a cold compress.
‘Get away from me,’ I hissed. ‘I saw you! It was you who pushed me. You put the hairbrush there to trick me and it was you who pushed me down the stairs.’
Still holding a wet washcloth in one hand, she had the audacity to look at me like I was the lunatic. She had only two expressions in her repertoire: the haughty owl and the startled horse. Both made me want to smack her. She wore the startled horse now; her head began to wobble and she looked as if she might cry. She said I must have either dreamed it or imagined it altogether and then walked in my sleep and fallen down the stairs. After all, I had fainted before. That was how she tried to brush the whole incident away.
I told her plainly that I knew it was her, that she had done it on purpose because of the secret I’d shared. The shock on her face enraged me. It was as if I’d taken a shit on the rug and was now asking her to eat it. She ran up the stairs clutching her nightgown like a little girl. I sat back in the chair and felt the familiar cramps. When I pulled up my nightgown and saw prints of bright red stuck on either side of my thighs, I knew the blood had started to come. Perhaps something had been alive inside me after all and been damaged by the fall, but I couldn’t be sure, for, since I’d married, my routine was not to be relied upon. Mrs Wiggs would now have the reassurance she craved: there would be no new intruders in her house.
When she emerged again, the owl was back – dark grey dress, hair swept back into a bun – and she entered the room two feet behind Thomas with a rather smug expression. Thomas looked bloody awful, far worse than me. I barked at Mrs Wiggs to leave us so I could talk to him alone, and I told him without hesitation that I wanted Mrs Wiggs gone, fired, sent back to Abbingdale Hall, whatever, I didn’t care, but she was to leave our house.
It was more than Thomas was able to bear. He collapsed into a chair and held his head in his hands, his long fingers tangled in his greasy black hair like crooked spikes. When I told him what had happened, he guffawed. I was sure he was still drunk.
When he’d finally stopped laughing, he said, ‘Why on earth would Mrs Wiggs feel the need to push you down the stairs?’
‘She hates me, always has. She doesn’t think me good enough.’
He laughed again, then stopped. His face grew dark and he slunk down lower in the chair. ‘If only you knew…’ he began, rubbing at his jawline, dragging the skin down so I could see the red of his bottom eyelids. ‘If only you knew how difficult things are… at the moment. I have a lot going on at the minute, Chapman. I’m going to need you to be a good and patient wife for the time being. Do you think you could do that? The truth is, I can’t afford to spend time on such petty concerns as the perennial bickering between my housekeeper and my wife. I’m going to have to ask that you get along – it’s essential. If you knew the… intricacies of what I’ve been having to deal with, you would understand.’
‘Then tell me, Thomas. You can start by telling me where you disappear to.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Then I want her gone.’
‘For the love of God!’ he shouted, and jumped up out of his chair. He paced up and down some more and then stopped and pointed a hostile, shaking finger in my face. ‘You seriously believe that Mrs Wiggs would steal a fucking hairbrush and… place this… hairbrush at the top of the fucking stairs, just so she could push you down them? There are easier ways of killing someone, Chapman.’
‘Oh, how so?’
‘You are aware of how ridiculous you sound, Susannah?’
‘I don’t care how you think it sounds; it’s true.’
He wouldn’t have it. He kept going on about this other work, how he was under such immense pressure, that this was not what he needed right now – again: distraction, dismissal, disbelief. When I asked him to tell me what was weighing so heavily on him, he said I wouldn’t understand.
‘It’s better if you don’t know – trust me. Sometimes I wish I bloody didn’t.’
‘Is it something to do with the woman in the attic?’
I couldn’t help myself, but I knew I’d pushed him as soon as I said it. The nerves fluttered in my stomach. It was as if I’d thrown a bucket of cold water in his face.
‘What?’
I smiled. ‘You don’t remember what you told me last night, do you?’
‘What… what did I say?’
‘No matter. I’m sure it’s nothing. Are you going to fire her or not?’
He patted down his trousers and looked about the room in a pink-cheeked panic, which, given his sweaty pallor, made his face somewhat blotchy. His eyes darted about, trying to remember what he’d done with the attic key, but it was not in his trouser pocket and I doubted he remembered wetting himself.
‘Where is it?’ He glared at me.
‘I don’t know,’ I lied.
He came at me, loomed over me with his disgusting breath in my face. I shifted away, but he grabbed my chin and pinched my cheek and turned it back towards him. He looked at the lump on my head and laughed.
‘That’s quite a bump you’ve got there, Susannah. Now, where is the key?’
I thrust my nose close to his and whispered, ‘I. Don’t. Bloody. Know.’
‘Stupid bitch.’ With the palm of his hand across my face, he shoved me backwards.
As he walked towards the door, I called after him. ‘Well? Are you going to fire her or not?’
‘I’ll see you gone first,’ he said, then he swung the door open so hard, it bounced off the wall and hit him on the back as he tried to walk through it. I tried to hide my sniggering, but he turned round and saw me. This made him so angry, he punched the door and made a crack in it. He must have near broken his hand, but he only swore and stomped off.
*
Later that week, on the last day of September, I approached the front door and, like my dungeon gaoler, Mrs Wiggs appeared.
‘Mrs Lancaster, Dr Lancaster asked that you stay inside the house at all times following your fall.’
‘I’m going to see my physician,’ I told her.
‘I can send for a doctor; you only have to ask.’
‘I wish to see my own physician. Please move.’
I pulled the door open, and she hopped out of the way. She knew from past experience I was willing to shunt her if necessary.
‘And the er… baby?’ she said, as I put a foot into the outside world.
I stopped. That was as close to an admission that she’d pushed me down those bloody stairs not in order to kill me or even hurt me but because she feared what might be growing in my belly.
‘It won’t be a concern any more,’ I answered, still with my back to her, and stepped onto the path.
‘Not everyone can be a mother,’ she said. ‘It demands enormous self-sacrifice. Some women don’t have it in them.’
I did turn around then, to see her grinning at me. I had never seen that face before: a smug grin, the superior cat, to join the horse and the owl. A triumphant smile, as if she’d won this particular battle, and would always win.
*
Dr Shivershev’s elegant housekeeper was walking too fast for me up the staircase.
‘You’re lucky he lives here,’ she said, not even remotely out of breath.
I had to rush to keep up with her. It was me that was huffing and puffing, yet she must have been twice my age.
‘He lives here?’
‘He owns the building, lets out the other rooms. He has several properties actually, but he lives on the top floor. I know it seems unlikely, but the doctor is quite the speculator. He talks of investing in manufacturing. He’s always lecturing me about how the English rely too much on imports and neglect their own industry. Have you not heard him ranting about inadequate technical education systems or the English obsession with excessive overseas investment?’
I shook my head, unable to get a word in edgeways.
‘Then you are one of the lucky ones, my dear. Yes, he lives frugally and isn’t the sort to spend. If it was left to him, this entire house would be unfurnished, only filled with instruments and those morbid specimens he insists on collecting. You’ve seen his office. He is not a believer in this new fashion for travelling to and from work, thinks it a pointless waste of precious time.’
She turned back to look at me now, flashed me her most charming smile.
‘Here I am, babbling on at you! Now, he told me he must see you, so I arranged his diary to accommodate this appointment. But please understand, Mrs Lancaster, he does not have long.’
I nodded. I was too conscious of catching my breath and noting how she’d expended comparatively little effort while I felt as if I’d run a hundred-yard sprint. I saw her take in the sweat on my upper lip and her expression changed. She seemed suddenly uncomfortable in my presence. I had the feeling that something about me had struck her as odd. I’d checked my reflection that morning and noticed that I was dull around the eyes, that my skin was dry and grey, and my egg-shaped lump still green. I began to worry I’d been spending too much time in my own company, unaware that my lips moved during my imaginary conversations, arguments I always won, with no one to point out my bizarre habits.
She opened the door to reveal Dr Shivershev behind his desk, spinning around on the spot, his head moving in all directions as if he were trying to swat a fly but first needed to find it.
‘Come in and sit down, Mrs Lancaster.’
His housekeeper shook her head, irritated by him instantly, showing that over-familiar fatigue one gets from close proximity. She closed the door behind her and I approached his desk.
‘I had both gloves in my hand only a second ago, how on earth could I lose one? It makes no sense, no sense at all,’ he said, still looking as if the missing glove could be found floating in mid-air.
I spotted it on the floor, picked it up and handed it to him.
‘Ah! Thank you. Please, sit down. Now, I suppose Irina told you…’
‘That you don’t have long, I understand,’ I said.
We locked eyes as I handed him the glove and he looked at me with the same expression as his housekeeper. I pretended not to notice. It felt strange enough being somewhere other than my bedroom, let alone out in the world beyond. It was most unsettling. We both stood there holding the black glove, until I realised I was the one who was supposed to let go. I think perhaps we were both recalling the moment we had last laid eyes on each other, in the Ten Bells. Of course, this would not be mentioned, neither of us could have a good explanation for being in there, so we would ignore it. This was an important part of our culture, after all: to understand when it was expected of us to ignore the glaringly obvious and politely pretend things were as they should be.
He asked how I had come about the lump on my head and sat forward, eager to listen, taking in all the bruises I wore in various states of healing.
‘My housekeeper pushed me down the stairs.’ I wasted no time. ‘I’ll come straight to it, Doctor. I am sorry if I appear out of sorts, but I fear for my life. It is not my intention to burden you, but I suppose it is your bad luck I have no one else. You’re the only person I’ve really had any conversation with outside of that house since I married, so I’m afraid I’m forced to confide in you. Please, this needs to be written down; otherwise, if anything does happen to me, no one will ever know. This way, there’ll be a record of this conversation and you can be a witness.’
I had his attention. He nodded, then took out fresh paper and a pen and gestured for me to continue.
I explained all that had led to my being seated in his office at that moment. How Thomas had changed after we married. How the scab on the back of my head had really come about and how I’d lied to protect him and not embarrass myself. I even confided in him that Thomas had come home with blood all up his arms and all over his coat and shirt.
‘Did he tell you what happened?’
‘No, only that he’d been in a fight with a man who owed him money.’
I blurted out this rambling, garbled mess and he tried to scrawl as fast as I spoke. I told him about our violent argument after the Café Royal, about Thomas’s subsequent disappearance and about how when he did eventually return home, he cried like a child begging for comfort and talked gibberish about a woman in the attic.
‘I’m sorry, what woman? I don’t understand – there is a woman in your attic?’ said Dr Shivershev.
‘No, of course not.’ I explained again, in more detail, about the attic and the dummy and the heart-shaped pendant. ‘And I’m now convinced that the necklace had belonged to someone before me. It had scratches, and it was also inlaid with a piece of peridot, which the woman at the Café Royale commented on, because—’
‘I’m sorry, I’m lost. What woman? The woman in the attic or the Café Royale?’
‘When we were leaving the restaurant, Thomas bumped into a gentleman – tall, grey whiskers, medals on his lapel – and that gentleman irritated Thomas by telling him that he was getting a reputation for… Well, it doesn’t matter. Anyway, the gentleman’s wife noticed my necklace and asked me if I’d just had a birthday because peridot is the birthstone for August.’
‘I’ll take your word for it – I have no understanding of such things. You said Dr Lancaster seemed agitated after speaking to this gentleman, the man with the medals. What did he say?’
‘That he’d heard bad things about Thomas, and Thomas was worried about how this would affect this other work he has, for a group of doctors – sponsored work. He tells me it is more profitable, but I don’t know much about it. This is what he blames for having to spend so much time away, but I don’t believe him. Oh, I am frightened, Dr Shivershev. I have married a dangerous man, one who may have done terrible things to the women who owned those clothes.’
‘It’s all right, Mrs Lancaster, I am listening. You are safe here. Please go on.’
I explained how I had come down the stairs and found the hairbrush and what that meant to me, but I kept getting events and explanations in the wrong order so they didn’t make sense. He frequently told me to slow down and to repeat myself. I was aware I was excitable, maybe a little hysterical, but I never got the sense he didn’t believe me. I felt I was doing the right thing by telling him absolutely everything.
‘She put the hairbrush there so I would pick it up, then she pushed me.’
‘You believe this… Mrs Wiggs, the housekeeper, tried to kill you?’
‘Yes! Who else could it be? But that’s not all, Dr Shivershev. There’s more, much, much more. I think the necklace he took from me that night belonged to one of the women whose clothes are in the attic.’
‘Why would your husband be stealing women’s clothes, Mrs Lancaster?’
‘I think he kills them.’
‘You think he murders women for their clothes?’
‘No! Well, not exactly, but yes, perhaps! Not for their clothes, but for something. He keeps their clothes for some reason. I… He goes missing sometimes. Often. He doesn’t come home for days at a time. When he does come home, he is bad-tempered and cruel… He is not…’
‘Not what?’
I just couldn’t bring myself to talk of Thomas’s urges in the bedroom. Dr Shivershev was taking everything down, and I didn’t want that part to be written down and made permanent with ink.
I changed the subject. ‘Have you heard anything of Mabel? It’s just I haven’t—’
Out of nowhere, he stood up and banged his hands down on the desk. I nearly leapt out of the chair. His eyes were wild as he stared down at me. I was so shocked, my cheeks tingled.
‘No, Mrs Lancaster. We had an agreement – you are not to mention that again.’
I shrank like a child. ‘I’m sorry.’ I sat with my hands bunched together and felt small and drained. I was stiff and sore from falling down the stairs and had lost my train of thought.
Dr Shivershev composed himself in seconds and was calm again, as if the eruption had never happened. He picked up his pen and calmly continued.
‘You believe your husband harbours violent impulses towards women?’
‘Yes, that’s correct.’ I nodded. ‘He has a vicious streak. I think him quite capable of terrible things.’
‘And this, er, hairbrush you talk about, can I ask its significance? It is an object of… importance to you?’
‘It belonged to a friend. Mrs Wiggs stole it from me to hurt me, to make me think myself mad.’
‘Nurse Barnard?’
‘Yes.’ I wasn’t sure if I should have said that. I should have lied and said it was my mother’s.
He nodded, as if confirming something he had long suspected, and then he was furiously writing again. I tried to see what he wrote, but it was illegible.
His office had descended into a state of neglect again, with dust on the glass jars and books on the floor. Worried I had lost a little of my currency with my indiscretion over Mabel and then with talk of Aisling, I felt I ought to win his loyalty back. I needed to have at least one person planted firmly on my side.
‘There’s more, Dr Shivershev,’ I said.
‘Go on.’
‘When we argued in the coach, the subject of the argument was you.’
He stopped, put down his pen and looked up. ‘Oh? How so?’
‘My husband didn’t approve of my choice of physician. He’d picked one for me himself, but I disobeyed him and found you. He doesn’t appear to like you very much.’
‘What exactly did he say?’
I had him now; his eyes were fixed on me. He sat back in his chair and folded his arms, as if creating a barrier to the words he already knew I would unleash.
‘He disapproves of you because you are Jewish, and, he said, because you are known to seek out the company of women of… immoral earnings.’
To his credit, Dr Shivershev remained expressionless, but I knew this had rattled him, for how could it not?
‘Why do I get the feeling I’m being drawn into something, Mrs Lancaster?’
‘He tore the necklace from my throat and hit me – you would have seen the bruises on my face that day in the Ten Bells. You must have seen them, surely?’
He said nothing, of course. I was not meant to mention the Ten Bells.
‘He does other things too. He is unpredictable. I will tell you one last thing, but you must promise not to write it down.’
He nodded again, so I continued. ‘On every occasion there has been a Whitechapel murder, I could not tell you where my husband was at the time. He was not at home. More significantly, each time he reappeared, he came with injuries.’
Dr Shivershev appeared particularly interested in this. He seemed to write down every word as I described Thomas’s various wounds.
‘Don’t you think it odd, Dr Shivershev?’ I asked by way of conclusion. ‘I know he’s involved in something troubling because he’s told me as much. Do you think it possible, Doctor, that my husband could be the Whitechapel murderer?’
‘There are murderers, Mrs Lancaster. I suppose at least some of them might be married.’
‘Then it’s fair to assume that any woman could be married to the Whitechapel man, and it is logical to assume that it could be a man of a medical education. In which case, could it be me? Could I have married the Whitechapel murderer?’
‘I think,’ he said, after a long intake of breath, ‘that, given all the things you’ve told me, you have genuine cause for concern. But apart from these strange bloodstained clothes in your attic, is there anything else? This other work, for instance… You’ve said that it is more profitable, and that he is secretive about it, and that this gentleman at the restaurant with the medals may also have some involvement. What is this work exactly?’
‘I don’t know. He won’t tell me.’
‘Have you told anyone else about anything? What about the police?’
‘Oh no.’ I shook my head.
‘Why not?’
‘Think of the scandal! What if I were wrong? Thomas is a gentleman and I’m just… the daughter of a whore. It wouldn’t be hard for people to find that out, if they were to look, if I were to cause trouble. Who would believe me? The wealthy stick together – you know that. The rest of us are always set apart. Even if the only thing we have in common is our supposed inferiority to the rich, Dr Shivershev, we must be careful not to cause trouble for each other.’
‘I do understand your hesitancy. Thank you for telling me all of this, Mrs Lancaster. I think perhaps a holiday would be a good idea. Is there somewhere you can go, even for a few days, to be safe from your husband and this housekeeper?’
‘A holiday? Good grief, this is no time for a holiday.’
‘I mean somewhere you can go to be safe and out of the way while I… think about this. How do you know this other work is legal, Mrs Lancaster? Have you considered your husband might be involved in something he shouldn’t?’
‘No, no, I didn’t think of that.’
‘And you are sure you don’t know anything about it, or what it is? There have been no clues or indications? He hasn’t said anything?’
‘No, nothing, not a word, and I have asked him.’
‘Right, right.’
‘I have a house in Reading, but there are tenants who live there. Thomas knows of that, so there’s no point running there.’
‘I understand. But you must understand that I now have a duty to your care. I am concerned for you, Mrs Lancaster.’
‘You won’t tell anyone, will you? I must make a plan, but please wait, please promise me you won’t tell the police, or anyone.’
‘I promise. But for now, why don’t you come back in a few days and we’ll discuss things further then. Let’s see how that lump is doing and make sure there aren’t any new ones. I will need time to digest what you have told me. Perhaps we can make this plan together, Mrs Lancaster.’
I exhaled air that felt as if it had been trapped in my lungs for a lifetime, a poisonous mess of sulphur and lead. It felt so good to tell someone who didn’t react as if I were delusional. If I were to be lost or killed, or if something else were to happen to me, at least I had Dr Shivershev, and he would ask questions, I was sure of it. It was a desperate kind of insurance, but it was a comfort.
‘There is one thing you can do for me, Mrs Lancaster.’
‘Yes?’
‘I would like you to reduce your consumption of laudanum.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Your eyes are not responding to the light the way they should, and you’ve been scratching at your arms the entire time you’ve been here.’
‘Have I?’ I pulled up my sleeves and saw that my forearms were covered in red scratches and there were scabs on the backs of my hands I hadn’t even noticed. I was still staring at them, bewildered by the sight, when Dr Shivershev almost lifted me out of the chair by my arm.
‘Now, if you don’t mind, I really have to leave. I have an important meeting to attend. Very wealthy clients – you know how they can be.’
As he hustled me to the door, we passed the shelves crammed full of specimens. My attention was drawn to the sole dust-free cloche, and I recognised it immediately: it was the specimen from Thomas’s attic, the baby inside the womb.
All the blood ran to my feet and I thought my knees would give way. Luckily, Dr Shivershev still had hold of my arm.
‘Are you well enough to get home?’ he said. He must have felt my trembling.
‘I’m fine. I’m only tired. I think I shall go home and rest.’
‘Of course. It can’t have been easy speaking about all this. Try to be calm, please. Everything will work out, you’ll see.’ He glanced at my face and saw that my eyes were fixed on the new specimen. ‘Ah, I forget that you are a fellow medic! So of course you have noticed my latest addition.’
With my arm still in his grip, he guided me over to examine it.
‘This is an amazing piece, quite artfully removed. What we are looking at here is a uterus during pregnancy. The foetus is perfectly intact and, I think, between fourteen to sixteen weeks. Isn’t it spectacular?’ He pointed a stubby finger. ‘That part there is the placenta. It’s beautiful, really, don’t you think? Women truly are creators – look what they can grow inside them. No one can replicate their gift. It’s fascinating.’
He stared at it as if it were a piece of art. He really did believe it was beautiful – his eyes glistened and I’d never seen him so in awe. For my part, I felt nauseous. Sicker than sick. Mabel had been around that stage in her pregnancy when I’d passed her on to her abortionist. Was it possible that we were admiring the baby that had been cut from Mabel? My whole body quivered at this horrific thought. Was my grip on reality so weak that I had delivered Mabel into the hands of someone who had then carved her insides out? Had I done this? My mind was so thick with fog, I simply couldn’t think straight or sensibly.
‘Where did you get it?’ I said.
‘From a dealer in a coffee house. You’d be surprised what you can buy in such places.’
‘I doubt I’d be surprised, Doctor, not by that,’ I said. I looked along the rest of the shelves, filled with organs split in half, body parts, veins and arteries filled with wax. The shelves were cluttered with every part that could have been extracted; still, sombre and silent, like my women were now. Yet they had all belonged to living creatures with aspirations and fears. ‘What is it about these specimens that fascinates you so? You must have seen many cadavers opened up, why keep collecting?’
‘Didn’t you ever find the carcass of an animal and poke it with a stick as a child?’ asked Dr Shivershev, almost before I’d finished talking. He turned to look at me and smiled. ‘I am willing to wager that you did, Mrs Lancaster.’
‘Yes, I’m sure I did.’
‘Well, you tell me, what compelled you to keep poking, to keep looking, to roll the carcass over and see what was on the inside?’
‘Curiosity, intrigue, I wanted to understand…’
‘So you have it,’ he interrupted. ‘You wanted to understand. And understanding is knowledge. Knowledge is progress, it doesn’t always make sense in the beginning, Mrs Lancaster. It can appear grotesque, amoral, perverse. It is difficult to imagine where the curiosity and intrigue will take you, but still, you want to see what’s on the inside because you wish to understand, you wish to know something.’
I thought of my macabre scrawling of the dead women’s last moments, and wondered if somehow, Dr Shivershev was talking about the same compulsion I had found in myself. The execution may be different, but the urges sounded as if they came from a similar place. He continued,
‘And why do we wish to understand, Mrs Lancaster?’
‘I don’t know, I… it is ultimately a selfish pursuit, I think. Perhaps to make ourselves feel better about … something.’
‘I think it is a way of fighting back?’
‘Against what?’
‘Not sure myself, you?’
‘I’m sure I don’t know.’
‘Well, if you find out, please let me know, I’ll spread the word, we can all move straight to confirming what this is all about and leave all the mess and blood and suffering that God seems compelled to throw at us and live in blissful rapture,’ he said.
‘Is she dead?’ I asked.
‘Who?’
Mabel, I nearly said. ‘The mother.’
‘Yes, of course.’ He laughed. ‘That’s the entire uterus.’ He tapped the glass. ‘And the cervix is that part there, it stretches out like the branch of a tree.’
‘How did the mother die?’
‘I have no idea. It was removed at autopsy. Besides, it’s not the mother I feel sympathy for.’
‘Why ever not?’ I looked at him, shocked by his lack of feeling.
‘There’s likely a man somewhere who lost a wife and child in one day. Now, I really must leave, Mrs Lancaster.’